Federal Member for Eden-Monaro, Gary Nairn, has cautioned Bega Valley residents not to be fooled by Kim Beazley’s Telstra stunt, currently taking place in marginal electorates in rural and regional Australia.

“There hasn’t been a Labor leader come near this part of Australia in 20 years despite it being held by a Labor representative for 13 of those years, so people should be very sceptical of Beazley’s visit”, said Gary Nairn.

“If the Bega Valley was not important to Labor leaders for 20 years, why all of a sudden is Kim Beazley showing up? The answer to that question is simple: he want’s to buy your votes,” Mr Nairn then added.

“The way he is trying to grab that vote is through nothing more than a political stunt. We all know that you can’t trust the Labor party when it comes to guarantees.

“The people of the Bega Valley should ask Mr Beazley why they should believe his guarantee this time, when the Australian Labor party have in the past, given two written guarantees prior to elections that they promptly broke immediately after those elections.”

“The first one of those was in relation to the Commonwealth Bank . After selling 50% of the Bank Labor had the audacity to include a guarantee of no further sale in a Prospectus. But as soon as the election was over the rest of the Bank was sold.

“The second time was in relation to income tax cuts. In order to reinforce how “legitimate” they were, they cynically prepared legislation and passed it through Parliament prior to the 1993 election. But of course as soon as that election was over they put that legislation to one side and it was never enacted.

“So the ALP has form on guarantees, and this demonstrates that they will do and say whatever it takes to get someone’s vote.

“I encourage the people of Bega Valley to tell Mr Beazley that he can take his guarantee and put it with his last two guarantees. Then maybe we will not see another Labor leader in the region for another 20 years,” concluded Mr Nairn.